Last week, the organization signed an agreement on the Island with the Cuban Communist Party (PCC)
14ymedio, Madrid, 6 May 2024 — “I don’t know what the president is referring to; I don’t know what he sees that needs to be democratized in Cuba.” The phrase is from Boris Barrera, a deputy of the Communist Party (PC) of Chile, referring to President Gabriel Boric. Within the Government there are no tensions with the PC, says Minister Camila Vallejo, a member of that same party, but the leaders of the organization have not taken well to the president’s statements and have not hesitated to let him know.
The controversy broke out on May 3, World Press Freedom Day, when the Chilean president, meeting with the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, spoke about the Island. “The situation is serious in Cuba, where today there is hunger and where it is necessary once and for all to lift the unilateral blockade*, in addition to moving towards democratization within the same country.” Boric’s words would be considered lukewarm by a large part of the international community, but they have been enough to anger one of the parties of his government’s coalition.
“Each country has the political system that it wants and that it imposes on itself (…). Cubans have given themselves in a democratic and sovereign way the political system they have,” Barrero told the president. His opinion was joined by Luis Cuello, head of the caucus of the communist deputies, who added: “The people of Cuba have the right to determine their own political system.”
“Cubans have given themselves in a democratic and sovereign way the political system they have,” Barrero told the president
On the same Friday, in the Círculo de Periodistas de Santiago de Chile, Lautaro Carmona and Bárbara Figueroa, president and secretary general of the PC, respectively, told the party’s militants about their recent trip to Cuba during an event in which funds were collected “to support Cuba.” Carmona said that during his time on the Island he learned “first hand, the effects of the criminal blockade* imposed by the United States.”
But his trip had another purpose, the signing of an agreement of “exchange and cooperation” between the communist parties of both countries, signed on the Island by Roberto Morales, current secretary of the organization and policy of cadres of the central committee of the PCC. Carmona provided some details of its content, among which stands out the “bilateral cooperation in the field of digital political communication, especially the work on social networks with the purpose of disseminating objective and truthful information opposed to the adverse media campaigns developed by the media of imperialism and its allies.”
The exchange on “issues of common interest” is also planned to reinforce “friendship, cooperation, dialogue, mutual learning and political trust between both parties,” which includes youth, feminist and trade union groups as priorities.
In addition, the objective is to “tighten the consultation and coordination mechanism for mutual support for international events, where it is necessary to establish a position of common principles, especially the São Paulo forum**” and also “promoting bilateral cooperation in terms of political formation and cadres,” including the creation of “economic cooperation platforms.”
Thus, the parties pledged to respect “the specific realities of Chile and Cuba” and “non-interference in internal affairs”
Thus, the parties pledged to respect “the specific realities of Chile and Cuba” and “non-interference in internal affairs,” he added, given the opportunity to complain about Boric’s words. “We want our government to have a closer look. We were with the ambassador of Chile there. Of course, it’s not the same thing we would have said, without speaking ill of him, from a professional point of view. But let’s make this urgent, let’s persevere, let’s not falter. This is a political, revolutionary mission,” added the leader of the PC.
“If we do it, we will feel the healthy satisfaction not only of having fulfilled, but also of being involved in a greater cause. We have a lot of closeness (with Cuba), but we have to make this a mass movement,” he said.
Despite the fact that Boric, who has been harder in the past with both the president of Nicaragua Daniel Ortega and the Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro – who has called him a “cowardly leftist” for his opinions – was reserved in his observations, his statements generated reactions from the entire parliamentary spectrum.
Among the opposition, the intervention of Guillermo Ramírez, of the right-wing Independent Democratic Union party, stands out, who said: “I am glad that the president talks about dictatorship when he talks about Cuba. In general, the left may have harsh words against Nicaragua and also against Venezuela, but it is very difficult for them to talk about Cuba; there is something romantic there that the left has not given up.”
“In general, the left can have harsh words against Nicaragua and also against Venezuela, but it is very difficult for them to talk about Cuba; there is something romantic there that the left has not given up”
Agustín Romero, of the opposition Republican Party, considered for his part that Boric “instead of looking outward, should worry about what is happening in Chile. Today, Chileans are being killed.”
The president’s position was generally supported by the government coalition, as the deputy of Social Convergence, Gonzalo Winter, made clear: “The situation of the embargo* is unacceptable, and the Cuban political model also moves completely away from what I understand by democracy.”
Maite Orsini, of the ruling Democratic Revolution, remarked that Cubans “are damaged both by their own government that prevents them from their civil and political rights and also by the blockade* that the United States has sustained for too many years.”
Vallejo herself, representative of the PC in the Government, said that the situation could go further and confirmed that the Executive supports Boric. “It is not something new, it is not something unknown to any ruling party, and it has been that conviction and that commitment to democracies, to human rights and to the integration of countries to be able to maintain that line and accept the consequence. Therefore, if it wasn’t a problem before, it wouldn’t have to be,” she said.
*Translator’s note: There is, in fact, no US ‘blockade’ on Cuba, but this continues to be the term the Cuban government prefers to apply to the ongoing US embargo. During the Cuban Missile Crisis the US ordered a Naval blockade (which it called a ‘quarantine’) on Cuba in 1962, between 22 October and 20 November of that year. The blockade was lifted when Russia agreed to remove its nuclear missiles from the Island. The embargo had been imposed earlier in the same year in February, and although modified from time to time, it is still in force.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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